Category: The Dish

Somewhat concerned I might be giving Dick Cheney some ideas, here’s how the Chinese government describes murdering detainees.

I’ve been struggling to understand this aspect of Obama’s appeal – and Larissa MacFarquhar’s fine profile in the New Yorker captures it extremely well. In his speeches on faith-in-doubt, in his preternatural personal calm, in his pragmatism and well-grounded sense of reality, Obama is something akin to a "conservative of doubt" and temperamentally more like one than I am. Money quote:

In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative. There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It’s not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good. Take health care, for example. "If you’re starting from scratch," he says, "then a single-payer system" — a government-managed system like Canada’s, which disconnects health insurance from employment — "would probably make sense. But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that’s not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they’ve known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside."

Of course, we also have a liberal voting record, and a lifetime among progressives. But conservatism-as-temperament is often more authentic than conservatism-as-ideology. I was also struck by this very conservative dictum that Obama seems to have taken to heart:

If everyone is family, no-one is family.

Somewhere, Burke is smiling, if only at the ironies of it all.

(Photo: Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) holds 10-month-old Claire Von Bergen of Iowa City while shaking hands with supporters after speaking on the Pentacrest at the University of Iowa April 22, 2007 in Iowa City, Iowa. The Senator spoke as part of an Earth Day celebration on the campus. By Scott Morgan/Getty Images)

Meet the left’s netroots. Jon Chait has a definitive essay (free pass-thru!) in the new New Republic. Money quote:

Already, the netroots are the most significant mass movement in U.S. politics since the rise of the Christian right more than two decades ago. And, by all appearances, they are far from finished with their task: recreating the Democratic Party in the image of the conservative machine they have set out to destroy…

It is true that the netroots embraces political calculation. But the strategies put forward by these activists almost invariably involve shifting the Democratic Party at least a bit to the left. Some of them are explicit about this. "Hiding from progressives and the left will lead to Democratic losses in 2006," wrote MyDD’s Matt Stoller last year. "Running as a progressive will lead to victory." One survey of netroots members found that two-thirds wanted the Democratic Party to move to the left.

So the netroots are clearly liberal, and more liberal than the Democratic Party as a whole. Ideology, however, is not the movement’s defining trait. What unites them is a desire to replicate the successes of the conservative movement dating back to the 1960s.

And TNR is moving leftward to meet them.

So here I am discovering and loving the thoughts of Alan Watts, and a reader tells me Matt Stone and Trey Parker have been there before and even made this very cool cartoon about "music and life," based on Alan Watts’ thoughts. I doubt very much I would have appreciated Watts’ sentiments had I not been forced to accept the idea that I might have a much-shortened life-span over a decade ago. But awareness of mortality is the one great thing that we moderns tend to overlook. I was lucky in a way to be reminded before I was thirty, just as one’s natural human hubris tends to peak. To philosophize is to learn how to die. And thereby how to live.

Many responses, and no outrage. I guess I was trafficking in a stereotype that isn’t entirely accurate (the p.c. not the fatness). One reader writes:

You wrote:

My hunch is that without shallow, physically-oriented men to appeal to, many lesbians feel even less need to stay in shape than many straight women do.

Er, not exactly. At least, that’s not what my lesbian friends have told me. Obese women have larger thighs, hips and breasts, which are all sexually desirable in lesbian communities.  Physically fit women have smaller thighs and breasts. So among lesbians, there’s actually a sexual incentive to be fat.

Not according to this woman:

I am a lesbian of normal weight who takes reasonably good care of herself, and I am frankly alarmed at the prevalence of obesity among lesbians. Indeed, it is nice to feel less pressure to conform to unattainable beauty standards than straight women do, but come on — there has to be some kind of healthy middle ground between starving oneself in order to look good and letting oneself turn into a whale! And I don’t buy the PC crap about "size discrimination" and whatnot. Obesity is a serious health issue. Period.

Not all of us are unwilling to talk about this, Andrew. I wish more lesbians would talk about it openly and honestly. I think the question of why obesity is more prevalent among lesbians could lead to some fruitful soul searching about unhealthy lifestyles. It could also bring to light potential biological factors and predispositions that would be useful to understand, if we could drop the PC code of silence about this problem.

And – oh heck, I’ll admit it – aesthetics have value, too! As a woman, I may not be as focused on looks as men are predisposed to be, but I sure am tired of seeing so many queer ladies out there who are way past 200 pounds. Way, way past. Sorry, but no amount of "fat acceptance" is going to make that a pleasant sight – gay, straight, butch, femme, male or female.

Another self-described "fat lesbian" adds:

You have spoken many times about the different world-views of the different "gay generations". Gay people who are  55-65 have a sensibility most strongly borne of the fight with the closet, AIDS, internalized homophobia, etc. 40-somethings have had less of a fight than those trailblazers. But then, you have those 25-35 year olds who exhibit a self-acceptance that can be almost shocking to those of us just 15 years older.

I think lesbian obesity is one of these generational issues. I had a girlfriend 15 years my senior, who, while slim herself, was attracted to me as heavy. I always found that difficult to comprehend. My generation, and even more so, the girls reaching adulthood now are much more conscious about their weight. I’m not nearly as attractive to my own age group.  For better or for worse, younger lesbians, femme or butch, seem to me to be more "physically-oriented" than their seniors.

Some observations.

A first-hand report.

Another flaming lefty, George F. Will, sees a looming Republican shift on Iraq. Money quote:

Stephanopoulos: If this now declared deadline of Gen. Petraeus of September, if the political goals haven’t been met by then, do you see large scale Republican defections at that point?

Will: Absolutely. They do not want to have, as they had in 2006, another election on Iraq. George, it took 30, 40 years for the Republican Party to get out from under Herbert Hoover. People would say, "Are you going to vote for Nixon in ’60?" "No, I don’t like Hoover." The Depression haunted the Republican Party. This could be a foreign policy equivalent of the Depression, forfeiting the Republican advantage they’ve had since the ’68 convention of the Democratic Party and the nomination of [George] McGovern. The advantage Republicans have had on national security matters may be forfeited.

Whatever the temporary advances or setbacks of an actual counter-insurgence strategy in Iraq, no one doubts that there can be no decent outcome there without a political reconciliation at a national level. We have three recent indicators of that likelihood. We have the news that Maliki may be protecting the Shiite militias from the brunt of "national" forces; we have the recent withdrawal from the government of leading Shiite figures under the sway of Moqtada al Sadr; and we now have the major Sunni bloc threatening to withdraw its ministers from the cabinet as well. Just in case we are under any illusions about the Iraqi elite’s interest in urgently finding a way forward, the parliament is also set to recess for two months this summer, while, at the current rate, two hundred young Americans will die to keep the Iraqi politicians’ options open. In 2006, meanwhile, terror attacks increased by a staggering 91 percent in the country. Those are some "last throes."

There is clearly some progress in al-Anbar; al Qaeda’s brutality may be backfiring finally; and, as with any mob, there was also a recent boss-hit that is gratifying (if finally confirmed). But the basic reality still faces us: there is no national government in Baghdad and no functioning state apparatus for keeping that country together for the foreseeable future. We have until September to make a final judgment. But I see slivers of hope, and deep, structural pessimism beneath them.

It’s noon on May 1. When better to launch a new blog-page? A little over a year ago, I had the idea of simply asking Dish readers to send in photographs of what they see from their own windows every day. This blog is more of a collective effort than it might seem. Hundreds of emails pour in each day, with tips and arguments and ideas and differing perspectives from all over the world and from every point of view. I get to read them (or at least as many as physically possible). You don’t, and I tried to think of a way to better convey the global reach of the Dish readership, and to remind people that the web is not that technological or abstract. It’s actually human beings with bodies and souls and homes and gardens and windows. I’ve been posting a window view almost every day since, but received many more than I could possibly post. So what to do?

Some of you suggested a gallery or a coffee table book. But Shaun Raviv, a particularly gifted colleague at the Atlantic, came up with something much more elegant. It’s a map of the world in flash animation, with almost 700 window views embedded. As you move your cursor over the map, you can zoom in on hundreds of places on earth, and travel the globe through the living rooms and offices and cars and bedrooms of other Dish readers. If you sent in a window view and it was never published in the Dish, it may well be now in "The World From Your Window". We still have more in the hopper to add, and we’ll be adding more and more as they appear in the Dish. So keep sending them in to andrew@theatlantic.com. Be sure to include a place and a time of day. (No pets or rainbows are allowed – and it should be from your window, preferably with some frame of the window in shot.) But here’s the page as it is now. The first time you look at it, be patient. It takes a little while for all the pictures to load. But soon, it should load quickly.

In my opinion, it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever produced on this blog, and I owe it to Shaun, the Atlantic, but most of all, you. This is your blog as well as mine; and this is the world you live in. Enjoy.